Chicago, Theory, and the Discourse of the Irish Emigrant Letter

Patrick O'Sullivan

Chicago, Theory, and the Discourse of the Irish Emigrant Letter

...a paper I gave at... 

Chicago: an Irish-American Metropolis?  Politics, Ethnicity, and Culture from 1830s to the Present Time”

An International and Multidisciplinary Conference

June 21-23, 2021

Below, I have pasted in the illustrations and references to accompany the paper...

1.  This international and multidisciplinary conference was a partnership between the universities of Chicago, Caen Normandie and Paris.

The conference was brought to our attention by our friends in Caen.  The conference was to have taken place in Paris, but in the end had to move to Zoom...

https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/articles/chicago-theory-and-the-discourse-of-the-irish-emigrant-letter/

A good conference, a good survey of the present state of Irish Diaspora Studies - as seen from Chicago and Paris...

2.  As ever, I moved forward with these things, cautiously, step by step - I want to get back into the habit of giving papers, and I wanted to give a coherent paper.

And spend no time quarrelling with technology.

So, I put the illustrations and references here on my blog...  With a Tinyurl ready to put into Chat in Zoom.  It worked.

This has revealed that many of the references in my database are a bit untidy - but I knew that.  I tend to catalogue a resource quickly, get it done - and then tidy the reference in the database as it is called up.

So, here you see me halfway through that task...

3.  The three paintings accompany some brief sections in my paper, as presented at this conference - where I look at the wider research literature on 'the letter', how letters appear, in theatre, literature and art - and life - and the place of the 'Emigrant Letter' in that research literature.  Which, you will appreciate, is a big subject on its own...

These are my three favourite paintings of the 'Emigrant Letter' in action - in England, Ireland and Spain.  Why are these three my favourites?  You will see that in all three paintings the task of reading and writing is given to the child.  Very telling, about the ways in which our people embrace and harness the technologies of the word.

4.  Note that two of the important books I reference are Open Access - I am trying as much as possible to reference Open Access research material...

Briody, M. (2007) The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970: History, Ideology, Methodology. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/66cac5d0-4aa2-4395-a8de-b384db4efc1f/617192.pdf

Vaughan, L. (2018) Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography. London: UCL Press

https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/108697

Two fine books...  And entry points as Irish Diaspora Studies thinks about 'the peasant' and 'the city'...

5.  My thanks to the organisers of the Conference - and to the friends, rediscovered and new, who appeared on my screen, here in my attic in Yorkshire.  Special thanks to Thierry Dubost and Alexandra Slaby, Caen Normandie.

 

James Collinson, Answering the Emigrant's Letter, 1850

James Brennan, Letter from America, 1875

Maximino Peña Muñoz, La carta del hijo ausente, 1887 - Letter from an absent son...

References

Akenson, D. H. (1993) The Irish diaspora. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University of Belfast.

Akenson, D. H. (1997) If the Irish ran the world, Montserrat, 1630-1730. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Booth, C. (1891) Life and Labour of the People in London: East, Central and South London. Macmillan and Company (Life and Labour of the People in London). Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=t3zaAAAAMAAJ.

Briody, M. (2007) The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970: History, Ideology, Methodology. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.

Daybell, J. (2012) The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635. Palgrave Macmillan.

Fitzpatrick, D. (1994) Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia. Cork: Cork University Press.

Fitzpatrick, D. (2006) ‘Exporting Brotherhood: Orangeism in South Australia’, Folk Life. Routledge, 45(1), pp. 77–102. doi: 10.1179/flk.2006.45.1.77.

Goldring, M. (2018) ‘Shadow theater in French Basque country’, Hérodote. Paris: La Découverte, 170(3), pp. 147–152. Available at: https://www.cairn-int.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=E_HER_170_0147.

Grabowska, I. and Buler, M. (2019) ‘The Centenary of the Polish Peasant in Europe and America through the Contemporary Concept of Social Remittances’, Polish Sociological Review. Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne (Polish Sociological Association), (205), pp. 85–102.

Gray, P. (1999) Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-50. Irish Academic Press.

Hall, D. and Malcolm, E. (2019) A New History of the Irish in Australia. Cork University Press. 

Kenny, K. (2009) ‘Twenty Years of Irish American Historiography’, Journal of American Ethnic History. University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Immigration & Ethnic History Society, 28(4), pp. 67–75. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40543471.

Laing, R. D. (1967) The Politics of Experience. Penguin Books. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZGTUlU5E5rAC.

Link, B. G. et al. (1999) ‘Real in Their Consequences: A Sociological Approach to Understanding the Association between Psychotic Symptoms and Violence’, American Sociological Review. [American Sociological Association, Sage Publications, Inc.], 64(2), pp. 316–332. doi: 10.2307/2657535.

Lopata, H. Z. (1996) ‘Polonia and “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America”’, Journal of American Ethnic History. University of Illinois Press, 16(1), pp. 37–46. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27502136.

Magnusson, L. (1999) Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCann, M., Ó Síocháin, S. and Ruane, J. (1994) Irish Travellers: Culture and Ethnicity. Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast.

Miller, K. A. (1985) Emigrants and exiles. New York: Oxford University Press.

Morgan, A. (1992) ‘The Lipman Seminar on Ireland, 1978-92’, British Association for Irish Studies Newsletter, Winter(2), pp. 4–5.

Mostwin, D. (1993) ‘Thomas and Znaniecki’s “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America”: Survival of the Book’, Polish American Studies. University of Illinois Press, 50(1), pp. 75–84. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20148405.

O’Farrell, P. (1986) The Irish in Australia.

O’Sullivan, P. (2003) ‘Developing Irish Diaspora Studies: A Personal View’, New Hibernia Review, 7(1), pp. 130–148. doi: 10.1353/nhr.2003.0031.

Schrier, A. (1997) Ireland and the American Emigration, 1850-1900. Dufour Editions.

Stewart, A. (2008) Shakespeare’s letters. Oxford University Press.

Thomas, W. I. and Thomas, D. S. (1928) The Child In America Behavior Problems And Programs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Trevelyan, C. E. (1848) The Irish crisis. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans.

Vaughan, L. (2018) Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography. UCL Press (-). Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=G_xuDwAAQBAJ.

 

Walsh, Rachael. 2021. Property Rights and Social Justice

This is a version of a note that I have placed on discussion groups.  It is not a review - it is simply a worried note, worried that I might easily have missed this important book...

Walsh, Rachael. 2021. Property Rights and Social Justice

Yes, it is a bit squalid to talk about an expensive academic book on social media.  I will find a sequence of important open access books and articles, to try to make amends...

My excuses...

I came across Rachael Walsh's new book as I move away from work in another part of my life - around the discourse of 'decolonisation' - which made me aware of the ways in which activists and theorists of decolonisation talk about 'land' and the redistribution of land.  But, often, 'land' in an abstract way, and with little connection with countries and communities where land redistribution has actually taken place.

If that work had not been in the background I might have missed Rachael Walsh's book.  For the book has been given a strange title by Cambridge University Press, a strangely prosaic title - I guess to slot into the series, Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law - with no indication that this book is an important contribution to Irish constitutional history, and the history of twentieth century Ireland.  And - since the book is about 'land' - potentially an important contribution to Irish Diaspora Studies...

Walsh, Rachael. 2021. Property Rights and Social Justice: Progressive Property in Action. Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/law/constitutional-and-administrative-law/property-rights-and-social-justice-progressive-property-action?format=HB

The starting point of the book is the fact that the 1937 Irish Constitution has 2 provisions that protect individual property rights.  Article 40 3 2 protects those rights and other rights against unjust attack.  Article 43 explicitly protects property rights, but adds that they can be regulated by the principles of social justice.  And can be limited by the exigencies of the common good.

This combination, the protection of property rights but with the requirement that they be regulated to secure social justice, is described as unique in the English-speaking, common law world.  The book is very good at placing itself within the debates on constitutions and their workings throughout the world - and of course those debates tend to be led by US constitutional theorists. 

In my reading of the book I concentrated, first, on its exploration of the ways in which theories of property entered the 1937 Constitution - obviously, through Catholic theology and other European developments.  But Ireland's history - the Penal Laws, the Famine, the Land Wars, the Land Acts - and the work of the Land Commission, these are there too.  Remembering that Dooley, The Land for the People, says that the impact of the Land Commission on Irish society was surpassed only by that of the Catholic Church...  But I am now reading the further chapters, on the ways in which Irish judges and politicians have negotiated these constitutional requirements.  'Land' is not an abstraction...

I do hope that this fine book gets the specialist attention that it deserves.  I look forward to the reviews...

 

 

 

 

The Writers' Guild... and the BBC...

I have distributed this note, below, to the BBC History group...

Wed 12/05/2021 

I have, at last, got hold of and I have read...

Yapp, Nick. 2009. The Write Stuff: A History of the Writers' Guild of Great

Britain 1959-2009. [London]: The Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

 

I have the pdf in front of me now.  Nick Yapp's history was published by the

Writers' Guild in 2009.  In a pattern that is familiar to us from our other

lives, when small organisations publish a book, in 2009 the book rapidly

disappeared from sight, and has not had the attention, and the use, it

deserves.  You will see variant bibliographic entries for the book - I have

followed what the text says.  I think that I give the correct bibliographic

information.

The book is of special interest to the historians of the BBC - the book has

199 references to the BBC in its 239 pages.  From its origins in the 1950s,

as the British Screen and Television Writers' Association (BSTWA), the

Writers' Guild has constantly been in negotiation with the BBC, sometimes

friendly negotiation.  The BBC was initially a monopoly supplier of radio

and television, and is always a major employer of writers and publisher of

their works.  There was also, and is still - as my readers here will be

aware - a constant churn of well-known names, from management within the BBC

and round the culture industries.  This needs constant name-checking by the

author, Nick Yapp - he is very good on this, very dogged.

 

Yapp follows the parts major characters played in various Writers' Guild

encounters with the BBC.  Like, the case of Frisby v BBC, 1967 - about the

censorship of one line in a tv play, p 40 onwards, and the Court's

interpretation of the writers contracts, negotiated by BSTWA and the Guild,

with the BBC.  Or, Chapter 18, on censorship, p 172 onwards.  Then, page 42

onwards, the tendency of BBC commissioners to commission themselves to write

scripts - amongst the significant contributions to the long debate was a

1969 article by Allan Prior (Z Cars, Softy, Softly) called Writers Who Sell

Their Scripts to Themselves, p 44.  Or p147, the time that BBC Radio Drama

decided that it was not subject to copyright laws.  Ceaseless vigilance,

indeed.

Note too that the BBC is a major publisher of books, and often displays a

tendency to forget the original writer of a project when a book appears with

a celebrity name on the title page - witness, p 69, the 1975 book based on

the tv series, The Explorers.  A recurring problem - again of interest to

historians of the BBC - is the way that the names of writers tend to be left

off the documents that will become historians' sources.  Note, p 83, p141,

p147, the disappearance of writers' credits from the pages of the Radio

Times - the Radio Times that has become the source document for the BBC

database, which we all use...

https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/

 

For a working writer the most extraordinary saga is on page 190, when in

2001, the BBC and the trade body of writers' agents came to a secret

agreement to bypass the Guild - a saga that is notably for the way in which

the Guild's representative, Bernie Corbett, held his nerve.  

Working writers, like me, also remember the weirdness of the BBC 'virtual internal

market', 1992 onwards, p 148, when it was cheaper for my colleagues within

the BBC to phone me with a query, rather than ask the BBC Library.  Paddy,

How long did the Thirty Years War last?

 

From the history, it seems to me, two things give the Writers' Guild clout -

the involvement of the screenwriters, and the fact that it is a trade union

associated with the TUC.  (Though that association was tested by the

Industrial Relations Bill 1970).  Nick Yapp pauses, a number of times, to

meditate on the Guild's relationship with the BBC - see 46 '...as the BBC

itself has come under pressure from unfriendly governments and aggressive

media rivals, the Guild has constantly worked to maintain good relations with 

Auntie, and to be sympathetic to her problems.  At the same time, however, the

Guild has always fought tooth and nail to protect the interests of writers.'

 

I am an active member of the Writers' Guild, and serve on the Books

Committee of the Guild - where one of our tasks is to bring Nick Yapp's

History up to date.  We, in the Guild, and the other creative industries

trade unions, are the experts on the 'gig economy'.  As Nick Yapp says, p

190, on new media... 'The new millennium was no place for the unprotected...

...The work of writers could now be exploited in more ways than ever before.

The attempt was made, time and again, to argue that old rules and old

contracts and old rights could not apply to new marketing fields or new

media...' 

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

May 2021

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

Patrick O'Sullivan's Whole Life Blog http://www.fiddlersdog.com/

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O'Sullivan, The Irish Famine, 1845 to 1852: source, silence, historiography

 

Patrick O’Sullivan

The Irish Famine, 1845 to 1852:  source, silence, historiography

February 2021

 

I was asked, and I said Yes.

There is a strange silver lining to the virus crisis...  So much stuff, meetings and presentations, has had to move to the online systems.  I have been able to take part in many 'events' that I would otherwise just have noted and regretted - and, many years later, chased up the paperwork.  Now, I sit in and take notes.

My trade union, the Writers' Guild, has created some great online, writerly meetings - mostly, when writers come together, they come together to whine.  But these meetings have been very craft-oriented and positive.  Other organisations I am part of, or am connected to, have created excellent online events - I have played autoharps in San Francisco, and I have sung ballads in Glasgow.

In my academic life I have 'attended' events organised - for example - by the Rocky Mountain Irish Roots Collective (about the Irish in Leadville, Colorado), and by the Irish Embassy, Washington, USA (about C19th black abolitionists in Ireland), and quite a number of work meetings.  And I am part of an online group exploring the discourse of 'decolonization'. 

I have been on 3 different platforms, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard and Zoom.  Of those 3, Zoom seems to work best.

I first connected with the meetings of the Rocky Mountain Irish Roots Collective - despite the extreme time difference - because I was so interested in the work of James Walsh, and his very human and very scholarly response to the unmarked graves of Leadville...

A web search will find links - but see

https://coloradomartinis.com/2020/12/05/leadville-colorado-forgotten-irish/

Irish Diaspora Studies always has a special interest in unmarked graves...

So, when the Rocky Mountain Irish Roots Collective asked me to give a presentation, about Irish Famine historiography, I said Yes.

I have put on my Dropbox the illustrative material that I will make available to the group this evening...

Patrick O’Sullivan

The Irish Famine, 1845 to 1852:  source, silence, historiography

Rocky Mountain Irish Roots Collective

February 2021

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/oxhu0k4nvnaxc6s/AAA9tBt5ONGT1sj3sybDNhsda?dl=0

My starting point is fairly simple:  in order to understand Irish Famine historiography you need to have read four books, two book published in the mid nineteenth century and two books published in the mid twentieth century.

Will I put forward the strong version of this argument, that in order to understand Irish Famine historiography you need to have read ONLY four books?  Well, Irish Famine historiography has certainly organised itself around those four books, and we do need to understand how and why.

So, today, February 27 2021, in the middle of my Yorkshire night, which is the Colorado day time, I will make my presentation to the Rocky Mountain Irish Roots Collective.  I wonder how I will get on.

Patrick O'Sullivan

February 2021

 

Potatoes 2021 - Heritage Research

 

We now have a patch of garden, which we are rescuing from oblivion.

Usually we buy our seed potatoes from a gathering of the West Yorkshire Organic Gardening Association (WYOGA) - there will be no gathering this year.  So, looking further afield...

In 2020 our potato harvest was not good - a very wet growing season, and it looks like there were soil problems in the bit of garden assigned to potatoes...

Thinking about a seed potato that can tolerate wet conditions and poor soil...  

Potatoes 2021 has become Heritage Research..

I bought lumpers...

https://potatohouse.co.uk/product/lumpers/

The lumper is a heritage variety, famous, or infamous, for its part in the Irish Famine, 1845-1852.

There has been a lot of discussion of the resurrected lumper...  This is Cormac Ó Gráda, The Lumper Potato and the Famine, on History Ireland...

https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-lumper-potato-and-the-famine-11/

See also...

https://laidbackgardener.blog/tag/irish-lumper-potato/

'...The ‘Lumper’ was pretty much forgotten about until Michael McKillop of Glens of Antrim Potatoes in Northern Ireland found it among other varieties of heritage potatoes in 2009. He grew the plant, produced more and now sells the spuds as a St. Patrick’s Day novelty at Marks and Spencer stores throughout Ireland. It’s also being grown in Canada at the University of Guelph’s Elora Research Station in Ontario, Canada and at Canadian Potato Genetic Resources in Fredericton, New Brunswick...'

http://www.thedailyspud.com/2013/03/11/lumper-potatoes/

'...the Lumpers I sampled had a decent flavour and a texture that tended towards the waxy end of the scale, while the mere fact of their availability is a story that has piqued people’s curiosity no end. With coverage including a front page article in the Irish Times last week, as well as a piece on RTE’s Six One news, this, undoubtedly, is the best press the Lumper has ever had...'

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/schools-invited-to-commemorate-famine-by-planting-lumper-potatoes-1.3832992

'...Schools across Ireland are being encouraged to sow Lumper potatoes this spring as a way of commemorating those who died during the Famine of the 1840s...'

I did not only buy lumpers, of course... 

I also bought a number of Sarpo varieties...  

Blight resistant.

http://sarpo.co.uk/

We are waiting for the seed potatoes to arrive.  And then we wait for warmer weather.

Patrick O'Sullivan

January 2021

Property

Property...

He's a man who owns several houses,

despite the ideals he espouses.

In one house he cooks,

in another, reads books,

and in one special house he carouses.

© Patrick O'Sullivan 2020

Hladowski sings O'Sullivan - a collaboration made in Yorkshire...

An update...

The Hladowski sings O'Sullivan project is done - and the album has been released...

I have made this web page as a starting point...

https://hladowskisingsosullivan.hearnow.com/

It is a useful link.  It is easy to share.  It works well on phones and mobile devices...

People can follow the links to the obvious places...  Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, Deezer...

And the album is also visible everywhere else...  Here it is, collecting on YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CXHKXfP1sfySZexg0ST7pJQtrShmVmC

In the present crisis, I am not sure how much more can be done...

But there you are...  We did it...